NUSES is a space mission promoted by the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space and the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). NUSES
will be a technological pathfinder for the development and test of innovative technologies and
observational strategies for future missions aiming at investigating cosmic radiation, astrophysical
neutrinos, the Sun-Earth environment, space weather and magnetosphere-ionosphere-lithosphere
coupling (MILC).
The NUSES satellite will host two payloads, TERZINA and ZIRÉ. The first one, TERZINA,
consists of a compact optical instrument equipped with a Cherenkov telescope based on the use
of state-of-art of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). TERZINA will characterize the Cherenkov
signature of high energy proton-induced background and therefore it will be instrumental for future
missions for the detection of astrophysical earth-skimming neutrinos. The second payload, ZIRÉ,
will be tailored to provide high precision measurements of the flux intensity of electrons, protons
and light Cosmic Ray nuclei up to hundreds of MeV and of gamma-rays in the 0.1 MeV - 10 MeV
energy range. ZIRÉ will be also capable of pinpointing possible MILC events by measuring the
charged particle flux.
In this paper we report the overall description of the instruments onboard the NUSES satellite
along with the scientific and technological objectives of the mission.